On Earth as It Is in Heaven

© Copyright 2004, 2011 Kristin Schneider.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

ISBN: 978-1-4269-7569-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4269-7570-7 (e)

Trafford rev. 07/11/2011

Contents

Author’s Note

Acknowledgement

Part 1 Coming Forth Into Matter

Part 2 Filling My Skin

Part 3 The House of David

Part 4 Conceiving the Child

Part 5 Pack Ice

Part 6 Changing

Part 7 The Cloth of Gold

Epilogue

The Author

Image431.PNG  Author’s Note Image431.PNG

This is a work of fiction. The names Sibyl and David I chose for their symbolism in the stories of the ancient Sibyls and their visits to the underworld, and the prophecies of King David. However, Sibyl contains fragments of myself. My philosophy of life, including my visions and dreams, and the confirmations received are included as Sibyl’s. The webpage of the book may be found at www.trafford.com/robots/03-2721.html from which copies may be purchased.

Kristin Schneider

Camberwell,

9 July 2011

Image431.PNG  Acknowledgement Image431.PNG

My sincere thanks go to the following people. To Juliette Thornton, for encouragement and support for this book. To Pam Marshall, Marianne Josephson, Elza Deres, Barbara Wilson and Margaret Healy for their inspiration for ‘Leah’. To Judy Burrell, Delfina Manor, Alison and Alan Murphy, Le Ann Flanigan and Anne Fenton for help with the manuscript. To Liz Johnson for work with the cover design and for her computing skills. To Lynda Robertson and Ray Abbott for assistance with the layout. To Trafford Publishing who arrived at the right moment. And finally to my family, the spiritual and physical, whom I love more each day as the remembrance of our oneness grows.

Image431.PNG  Part 1 Image431.PNG

COMING FORTH INTO MATTER

I reach into my heart and find love. I scatter it to the stars, and they twinkle it back to the earth. My soul hitches a lift, skimming on a pulse of light. I pass by men and women, harvesting grain, making bread. I see hearth fires and bedrooms. Glances acknowledge my journey. Sirius beams me strength and purpose. My beacon ahead, I fly through the veils of existence and alight in grace. Sirius, remember me so that I live.

Here I am standing in the midst of my panic. I look out of my eyes and everything is altered. The clock has just struck thirteen! Insanity hovers. The room undulates, the real is unreal, the unreal is distorted reality. The pale green walls sway and darken. The cheerful curtains patterned with Eucalyptus leaves become cracks into another more sinister world, foetid vapours swirl around my legs, entrapping me in the stench of the old and not quite forgotten. The mists of my mind return me to the terrified little girl, desperately clutching at her mother’s skirts. Don’t let her go away and leave me! The outside world threatens with the unknown, the only thing which still has the force to frighten me.

I thought I had beaten panic. I’ve had it all my life, on and off. I’d developed a different strategy for living through it every time it has appeared. And I thought I had finished with it. It hasn’t bothered me for about twenty years, just in flashes, easily assimilated. I’d developed my latest way of dealing with it when living in Sweden. It used to sneak up on me, from the side behind my line of vision. I would begin by feeling uncomfortable, needled. I would be going about my daily chores in the community where I lived, frowning, screwing up my face, trying to shrug off something invisible, not quite in my mind yet. Then suddenly I would see it. I would gasp in surprise. Oh this is just another one of these things! I would say, and then I would look direcdy at it, this disturbance. So where are we going with you today? I would say, and immediately the feeling would change. The flap would be over, and the frown would smooth out, a smile would return to my face. So many times I went through that procedure, I thought I had the measure of panic.

But here it is rearing out of control again. It doesn’t respond when I look at it and say What are you up to this time? It just gets worse day by day. My honesty is leading me nowhere , it seems to skirt around the edges of a truth which I can’t quite grasp. I wake up in the mornings, my heart pounding, sweating, a tight band around my diaphragm, feeling I haven’t slept at all. High blood pressure, death by stroke, or worse, paralysis and a long life. My body is healthy, and could live long. My nervous system is beleaguered, too tired to move. Meditation gives me the only relief, and that transient.

I am a woman who has lived more than half her allotted lifespan. I have been a lover, a mother and have lived a long time alone. My career when I followed it was successful but I abandoned it to search for something deeper, a more elusive truth about life. I abandoned my marriage and religion for much the same reason, but never my children. They are scattered over the earth now, finding their own success, but still close to my heart. I am not endowed with physical beauty, or many physical possessions, but my spirit self creates beauty around me, gives me a patience and tolerance, a calmness and generosity which comes from years of silence, meditation, a reverence for nature and the habit of caring for others. I have been ruthless with my beliefs, retaining only those which enhance my life experience, and discarding those which produce limitation and guilt. That is an ongoing process, as beliefs subtly reveal themselves through life’s challenges, begging attention and dismantling in one’s handling of situations. I have the ultimate respect for myself as a being, as it is through the consideration and love of the self that I can serve all others.

My spirit dances with the wind through the red gums, twining gracefully with the great spirits of nature. Here I am unshackled, reflecting flowers, bathing in their perfume. I see myself performing aerial gymnastics, leaping from tree to tree, faster than the insects, more sure-footed than the birds. Then I spring back into my physical body, back to the flatfoot existence here on earth, plodding about, confined.

My physical self likes to wear bright clothes, unusual creations, deep dark blues and purples, highlights of gold and turquoise. I love soft mohair and brushed wool, furlined boots and coats. Bright coloured stones in rings and necklaces. But on ordinary days I am indistinguishable in my T shirts and trousers. I have given away most of the possessions I had when my children lived with me. I like to live without clutter, simply. I meet my needs, and a bit more, but when possessions start to crowd me again, I take another load down to the op shop. I still enjoy the feel of my lips on my grandmother’s fine china cups, each delicately painted. Strong pictures on the walls. The Swedish forest drawn in pencil is fairyland, an aboriginal print, again of a forest is my home territory. Music I play all day long, favouring the overpowering passion of the human voice. I am orderly, with photographs and fresh flowers around my desk, a routine to follow each day, and no scruples when I occasionally leave it all and go out. I am in my centre, viewing the world as it spins around me, and radiating love to all within my sphere.

There are other times of course when stress clouds my spirit and I become lost in a maze of panic and uncertainty. The flowers in their vases fade, and my joy with them. Then I crave company and diversion. My mind sets up an incessant chatter, trying to delve into my feelings from its own limited perspective, trying to find the source of the malaise, to lift the anguish. And all the time I know I am chasing in vain circles, searching through illusion, but I can’t stop as the hunt gathers speed.

I’ve gathered many techniques for lifting myself out of panic. But it is a strange creature. Its heavy fog creeps over my body like a personoid, peering behind my ears, lifting my breasts, inspecting the crevices under my arms to see what is hidden there. I lie waiting for it, breathing deeply, watching its progress, accepting it into me, into the vast resources of the human spirit. Resistance is useless. Drugs merely cloud the issue. Acceptance and understanding the only tools. Panic swoops on every uncertainty and weaves its cocoon of false beliefs around them. It is a chameleon, changing its ways in harmony with its surroundings. It is never the same, and that is the reason my mind goes into the frenzied chase, searching out the new aspects of the current onslaught. It is the soul seeking expression. But the soul’s answer can also be elusive, and I must wait for the right moment, for its revelation of the new path.

Then suddenly the panic lifts. I feel bathed in a sudden beam of sunlight, or greeted by a smile from a fascinating stranger. I am suddenly lifted out of the whirlpool of horrors, and am back in my serene self, whom I had never wished to leave, standing triumphandy at the start of a new journey.

I had returned from living seven years overseas, and wondered how to start a new life. I missed my friends from the community where I had held a responsible position. The life, the friends and the work, all my support systems had gone, as I entered a vacuum which didn’t recognize me. Australia had changed so much since I left. September 11, with its terrorist attack on the USA was in the past and the people were uneasy in the face of world events, clutching at anything to bring security. The politicians, the issues, the TV programs were not only different, they had leapt up a cog in their development and I didn’t recognize the direction they had taken. I hardly recognized the city streets, the attitudes even less. Everything had gone wrong for me, beginning at an airport en route to Australia where I was cheated out of $500 for excess baggage which I didn’t have. Then the medical insurance office refused to reimburse me for visits to the doctor. My regular payment of the premiums during my absence simply didn’t count. What had become of this country, Australia Fair? Now a foreigner, I had to reimmigrate to my own land, provide documents of rental (I was staying with family), registration for unemployment (I was not looking for a job), severance agreements from my previous residence (I’d left them behind), documents relating to purchase of a car (I purchased it from my parents, and as anyone can change a registration, that didn’t count). The inhumanity of the market-place economy was leaving its traces through the fabric of society. But it was not only Australia which was making difficulties for me, there were brick walls everywhere. Money which should have been sent on to me from overseas didn’t come. Even the rug my friends had given me in parting had not arrived. I wondered if I should have stayed. But it felt clear that that work was finished for me, I had to take a step forward now, into the unknown.

I reached Australia jetlagged, fuzzy in the head, lost, and as usual, went to stay with my mother and father. My parents are old now, father often ill, they enjoyed my company and could use some help, although they would never ask for it. But it took away my independence. I was always a child in this household. The years had changed me into a person different from my parents, saddening them and gladdening me. I had lived through my old religious beliefs and broadened them into a life unruled by laws or prohibitions, driven by the principal of love, but still muddied by the fears and uncertainties in the physical life. I felt responsible for my father’s oblique comments about my religion, or lack of it. Australia was not welcoming me home, I who had come obedient to my inner voice ready to love them all.

I survived my anxiety by writing my diary, covering the paper with fear, trying to make some sense of it. The sunlight found its way around the curtains, bringing desperate glimpses of the tops of the trees and the red roofs of the city. My room in my parents’ home was neat and airy, one timber wall hung with pictures of past loves, children, art evocative of tenderness, and the other walls pale green, the floor polished cork tile, with Persian scatter rugs. The birch tree outside my upstairs window waved cheerily, reminding me of my beloved northern forests. I heard my parents moving around downstairs, dreading that I would overhear them talking about me. What’s Sibyl doing? in my father’s voice, reminding me of years of strictness and impatience, was enough to bring on another surge of guilt.

In between the place where my spirit loves and accepts all, and my uneasy affection for my father on the surface, was a moat of fear and distrust, now fuelled by my father’s frustration with his body, which spilt over to those in the house with him. This distrust was a legacy of war. Born in 1942, I didn’t meet my father till 1945, as he was engaged in frightening our own soldiers to death with dentistry in Bougainville. When I did meet him, my contrary nature did not sit well with his authoritarianism, and so the chasm begun by distance, began to widen.

Panic accompanies change in the psyche. Massive change in life direction. All my life I had been a scientist, I’d worked best with computers and figures. Suddenly I couldn’t do this work any more, my whole being shuddering at the thought of it. My dreams, the symbols, the parts of life that worked, even the parts that didn’t work all told me the same thing

Leave the left-brain work! Be creative, artistic, expand your horizons. I had always considered that science was my art form. I was not an arty person, I’m hopeless at drawing. But I can write, and had always enjoyed recording events and composing stories. Sitting in the quiet of the early morning, parents still sleeping, I meditated into my life. To compound the situation, yesterday I had received a card from my friend Leah, a sensitive.

You have a treasure to share in the story of you and David and if you commit yourself to the idea of completing the book you will be surprised and delighted with all that happens. The reason that I have written this and not phoned is that ‘they’ want you to read that the story already has a presence in this world. The message seemed to come from a male. I have no idea who they are but they were really adamant that you got the message. I had to get up in the freezing cold and write this NOW!

I had been considering writing such a book, but needed this push to get me started. I have no hesitation in obeying such directives, I have had them before, and although my obedience has led me along strange paths, they had always brought a positive outcome. I decided to give myself a chance to undergo this life change.

Then I dozed off and suddenly I was dreaming. I saw David my lover of 20 years ago. I had loved David more than anyone else in my life, but eventually we had separated. He had died a year ago. And here he was talking to me again, showing that through love we could maintain contact even after death. Now I could see David in a new light. As he had never said an angry or sarcastic word to me in our many years together, he was able to become the father I had never had. My childhood wounds had begun to heal in his warmth and generosity, and now in my dreamworld he promised to help me to leave my shadows and grow be the love that I am. This would enable me to build a sparkling rainbow bridge across the moat of despair and distrust. Spanning the chasm of duality which coloured all our lives here on earth. The love and fear, the black and white of every situation. To understand how terrorism arises, the result of not enough love. Perhaps abolishing the power of panic forever. Life is a mosaic, with different people filling different spaces, and so long as the spaces are filled, it doesn’t matter who fills them. Parents, lovers, friends, children all taking a part in filling out the final picture. I accepted his help in this task, to continue the work we had begun together on earth. I would build my bridge into the oneness, the unity of body, mind and spirit, the place where only love rules.

I needed now to return to my centre. I’d waited too long in the city. So I decided to leave my parents in their uneasy health and move to the country, keeping an eye on them from a distance. I would tell my story about the panic which has tormented me for too long. I’d trace it to its source to learn how it began. I would explore how I came to be who I am, and how David taught me so many things about love and life. I shall start right at the beginning.

My imagination takes me on a journey. I was being born. The idyllic warm nest had started to contract, pushing and shoving my tiny body towards the chosen life. My plans were detailed, I could see my life path stretching out in front of me. It was almost a reward this life, a chance to enjoy myself whilst helping others, many challenges, and above all, many different forms of loving. I was happy in my spirit world, but also excited at the thought of the physical life again. Fully aware at this point, I imagined both worlds. The world of spirit stretched around me on all sides. It was so different from physical vision. To know a single object gave me a complete view of all sides of it at once, not at all like physical sight where the eyes see only what is facing the observer. Then I imagined too, the complete awareness of not only the physical objects, but the feelings and thoughts, the smiles and whispers, these nuances of existence. A single thought ripples through the rest of creation, and all its effects are seen in the world of spirit. I could not be happy to leave all that awareness for the forgetfulness of the physical life, which was also visible in its three dimensional limitation. But I was on the roller-coaster ride to life on earth, there was no turning back.

I didn’t really want to leave the womb, didn’t want to enter the world all alone. Each contraction of my mother’s womb opened the gate to the external world, little by little the portals drew aside. Suddenly the end of my warm nest gave me a smart kick up the backside, forcing my head down through the tight exit doors. Here I go I thought, I’d better make the best of it. I felt squeezed as my head rotated down the narrow tunnel. Another contraction came, pushing me further into the birth canal. Dreadfully uncomfortable, this birth process. I wanted to break through and scream my frustration. Then another more powerful contraction tried to push my head through the opening. Something around my neck was holding me back. I felt it tug at me, impeding my progress. What’s going on? I’m trying to get born here! The next contraction tightened something around my neck, and at the same time pushed my head out into the world. It’s awful, I’m doing my best here, can’t you just let me through? I felt the blood welling in my head, felt in need of oxygen, but the cord bit into my neck, cutting off the circulation both to my head and to the rest of my body. Every contraction increased the discomfort and yet kept me immobile. My frustration became molten. I could feel hands groping about my neck. Please just let me out of here, stop harassing me! I’m squashed in here. I can’t go forward or back.

Can’t somebody disentangle me? I want to get out and live this life. I felt another push behind me. Stop pushing me, I’m stuck! I’m doing my best to get out of here. The hands grasped the cord, and pushed it down over my shoulders, as they too were born. The rest of me wriggled out into the cold air, disliking the clammy feel of my wet body, and taking the first gasping breath. The valves of my respiratory system and heart opened, the blood changed its course, and here I was breathing like a human being. At this moment a grey cloud blocked out my memory of the spirit world I had come from, and I was left with only the three dimensional consciousness of a human baby. The tearing panic entered at that moment. I was stripped of everything familiar. Suddenly alone, the terror gripped me. I forgot my plan, the love, the service. I was separated even from my mother, who lay anaesthetised. I felt only rage and fear! I screamed as if my lungs would burst. And nobody acknowledged my fear. I yelled and kicked. Nobody took the slightest notice.

I’m telling you, I’m telling you! They weighed me, and wrapped me in a cloth. I don’t want to be alone here! Won’t anybody listen?

You have a beautiful baby girl they said to my mother, just now awakening from the anaesthetic.

I’m not beautiful, I’m angry I yelled Please just listen to me. I was tired now, dispirited, Oh just go away and leave me alone! My sobs became less, I curled myself up into a ball and snuffled myself to sleep. The outrage tucked away, ready to torment me at a later date.

Life and Love, Fear and Death. Life bringing love, tempered always by the fear of death, the perceived cessation of joy, the tomb. Or we could say life and Fear, Love and Death. In an expanded vision Death becomes a sinking into Love. Tristan and Isolde. Life a path strewn with obstacles. But Life can be expanded also, into the beingness of all things, its cohesiveness coming from Love. In this vision, both fear and death disappear.

Life has to be lived however, insights gained through experience. We are born in our forgetfulness, and spend our life remembering who we are, putting together the strands we were born with, and which hover around us, waiting for recognition and consciousness. Consciousness brings power, the place of our soul in our lives, the gentle art of speech with the intangible, its answer flowing swiftly to the physical world, harmonious, altering our strands, changing directions at the merest thought. Love and Life. But the journey to this point is arduous, Life and Fear.

Birth and childhood hold the keys to one’s life patterns. Several things stand out from my birth, which I have dramatized from comments from my mother, and my own observations of human behaviour. Although I remember no pictures of my birth, the feelings are intact, and by every means at my disposal, I can trace them to these events. Above all stands the separation. Physically from my mother, but also from mother spirit, unknowable, only glimpsed in flashes through the imagination.

I see the universe and my own life as one. I might very well be angry, I can scream and shout, be heard, acknowledged. But if I am at one, it all comes back to myself. I was angry with myself. I had orchestrated my own birth, caught the cord around my own neck, and then resigned myself to not being heard. The blueprint of frustration is born. My frustration now creates my own high blood pressure. My birth brought the beginnings of my life patterns. The abject fear I can feel at living alone. The terror of the new which can leave me paralyzed and mute. My disappointment when others don’t see what to me is obvious. My insistence at doing things my way. My intolerance of interference. The panic of bottled up emotion. The commitment to love and service whose light rays break through the discomfort of life. My patterns no less, simply requiring my acknowledgement.

I was born in 1942, in the days which marked the turn of the tide of war towards the allies. As my father was in the armed services, my mother and I returned to my mother’s family home on a farm in the country, which became my paradise.

Babies are still a part of their mother, within their mother’s being. The fierce mothering urge begins as baby nesdes into her, she caressing, fondling the tiny fingers, tickling the toes. Kissing the top of the downy head. I learned from my mother’s touch, the intimacy of nursing at the breast, smiling and burbling my first sounds. I have always had the strong connection to my mother, and as I have matured I have added a deep respect to my child’s feelings. But my infancy was filled with many murmurs, which have left echoes into adulthood.

In my grandparents’ house I was not entirely comfortable in my body. Griping pains came, a restlessness also which prevented me sleeping. Enjoying the attention so much, it was hard to settle down afterwards. I was a bit of a squawker and was rescued by an eminent paediatrician who explained to my mother that there were many babies then who suffered a